The First Step

I can judge how well my day is going to be on the first step of my morning run. It’s one of my stupid human tricks that I’m pretty proud of. Give me just one small step and I can immediately tell whether it will be a positive productive day, or one to be flushed down the ol’ crapper. There really isn’t any scientific reason behind it all. Or at least none that I can detect. It has nothing to do with how tired or relaxed I am, or how much my bones and muscles may ache. It’s just some innate sense I have that enables me to judge the day based on one simple step, in the same way that perhaps a little bird suddenly can fly. It just knows that when it flaps its wings it’ll be a good day. When it doesn’t, it’ll smash its face into the ground. Bad day.

I smashed my face into the ground today.

Had I gone running this morning, perhaps I would’ve had some forewarning into what the day had in store. But, alas, I went for a swim at the Tampa YMCA. 3x400m, which was fun – for the first 400m. Then it kinda went downhill, but that’s another story entirely.

I went running later in the evening, to try to get the damn day out of my system and make it all better. It was too late though, as evidenced by the horrendously painful 2 mile waddle in an astonishingly slow 22 minutes. Needless to say, it didn’t get anything out of my system aside from a few extra heartbeats that I’d like back.

The day started with the big client project that went awry on Friday night. You remember this one, the big Times Square event that the client spent all of their marketing budget on. The Big Disaster is what we should call it now. TBD. I talked to the client this morning for the first time since TBD. He couldn’t talk this weekend because he went to a funeral the day after the event. How apropos.

The client wasn’t happy. At all. There wasn’t yelling, cause he’s not a yeller. He doesn’t need to be, you can just sense the disappointment and anger in his tone. So I got off the phone with him and started to spend my day figuring out how I was going to make it all better.

Well that set me up for the talk I had with my boss a few minutes later. The boss really laid my new job on the line for me. Now I’m given until early next week to decide if I want to stay at the company or not. How’s that for a decision to make over the holiday weekend? And I was hoping my biggest decision would be whether I could squeeze another helping of stuffing into my face without throwing up.

I looked at the clock. It was 10am
And the day didn’t get any better.

But the family gets into town tomorrow. And Catherine arrives as well. So tomorrow is officially the first day of Thanksgiving holiday for me. It can’t possibly be a bad day, there is too much good about to happen. So I’m maintaining my bright and shiny positive attitude. I’m eager to dive into tomorrow’s activities. Excited to seize the weekend. Carpe Thanksgiving.

It’s time I started flapping my wings.